NATO Expansion: Strengthening the Alliance?

Abstract

The Future of NATO Expansion: Four Case Studies. By Zoltan Barany. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 278 pp., $65.00 (ISBN: 0-521-82169-X). Despite the outwardly placid front associated with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) expansion in the post-Cold War era, many strategic and political issues simmer behind the facade of consensus among alliance members and designated new members. In The Future of NATO Expansion , Zoltan Barany sets out to evaluate systematically and in considerable detail the preparedness of four states for full NATO membership in the second enlargement round. The emphasis is on comparative analysis with no attempt at constructing or testing theory. The book is a contribution to scholarship on alliance operations and politics, offering much for an understanding of NATO's challenging project to reconfigure itself and its mission in the altered security environment that emerged after 1989. Barany argues in broader terms that NATO should indeed expand into Eastern Europe but that the prospective states should satisfy the alliance's membership criteria before acquiring full member status. NATO's first round of expansion came in 1999 with the accession of three erstwhile Warsaw Pact members—the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland—forming a nineteen-state alliance. Barany admits that, at that time, he had criticized the expansion because it was not essential to the alliance and potentially provocative for Russia. However, Barany shifted his stance once the process had commenced, advocating further enlargement. The second round of expansion, announced at NATO's Prague Summit in November 2002, slated Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania for membership. Barany has chosen to focus his study on the first …